Issue 33
Before creating one, I liked magazines because in my eyes they had no other logic but their own. Someone would immediately reveal their direction and everything that followed gave the impression of providing access to their wardrobe as well as the inside of their mind. I was fascinated by the fact that everything which fed the layout – even the most insignificant pair of tights – automatically took the very specific tone of the whole, to the extent that on closing my magazine, for a while I would continue to see reality through the fictional world which had just been projected on me. This was long before I learnt that one morning in 1931, a little woman in a black suit with white gloves, called Carmel Snow, decided to add an A to BAZAAR in order to signify that the magazine was henceforth hers. She then hastened to rescue the photographer Martin Munkasci from the void of the sports pages in order to impose her vision of women running upon a beach wearing jersey by Jean Patou. Before learning how Grace Mirabella had created her ideal world where everything was comfortable, with soft pockets, feminist emancipation and white teeth, protecting herself from worldly worries in an office entirely swathed in beige. In fact, I continue to believe that a magazine is someone’s monologue. And, that this person is a narrator who offers us the illusion of living in the present, because we most certainly cannot live without illusions. This is in any case the driving force and the substance of ENCENS. This 33rd edition is no exception.
